Pheromones, become known as physiological active substance, are defined as substances that are created in a body of animals and secreted out of the body to act on other individuals of the same species, thereby inducing a specific activation or a variation of physiological phenomena.
According to the previous studies, pheromone secreted from C. elegance exists in extremely low concentration, having less than 1,000 Dalton. The pheromone is known as single substance or related compound, which is very stable and non-volatile, having a chromatography property such as short fatty acid hydroxide (Piddle, D. L., Science, 218: 578-580, 1982).
In the thesis of Riddle, although a pheromone moiety is partially purified, an exact chemical configuration and physical properties of pure pheromone are not known yet. In addition, since a pheromone extract from of C. elegance used by the researchers is a crude extract partially purified, there is no way to study for finding an exact physiological target and biological mechanisms.
Therefore, the inventors of the present invention mass-cultured C. elegance containing the pheromone in the largest state that can induce dauer larva stage due to stress or worsened living environment. And then the inventors isolated and purified the pheromone secreted from the C. elegance, and determined the chemical configuration of a purified pheromone. As a result, it has noted that the purified pheromone is 6-(3,5-dihydroxy-6-methyl-tetrahydro-pyran-2-yloxy)heptanoic acid, having a following two-dimensional planar structure formula (Paik et al, Korean Patent Application No. 10-2002-0070591 and PCT application No. PCT/KR03/02059)

However, a three-dimensional chemical configuration of the above two-dimensional pheromone compound and a total synthesis are not known yet. Since the novel pheromone compound has 5 asymmetric carbons, the stereochemistry configuration of the pheromone compound may be possibly provided with 36 stereoisomers. Therefore, a stereochemistry configuration should be essentially determined to synthesize the pheromone compound identical with exact natural pheromone having a correct stereochemistry.
In addition, in order to research aging, stress, metabolism, signal transfer system in vivo, to develop medical substances relating to anticancer, obesity and a suppressing agent for aging and stress, and to research active target protein body of the pheromone, it is inevitably required to develop full synthesis method for mass-production of the pheromone.
Therefore, the inventors determined a three-dimensional stereochemistry configuration of the pheromone isolated from C. elegance to synthesize the pheromone identical with natural pheromone using spectroscopic technologies. In addition, the inventors successfully performed stereospecific total synthesis, thereby obtaining the pheromone fully identical with the natural pheromone. This method provides the mass-production of the pheromone, overcoming the limited amount of natural pheromone. In addition, it is identified that the pheromone obtained according to the present invention has dauer formation effect in vivo test using C. elegance.